Live Report, Urawa Narciss: Tora Sky Walkers

Last night was a great, great show!

First, we met up at 11am at Narciss and rehearsed for a couple of hours. It was the first time I'd met our lead guitarist, Kuma, from AibeLL. Kuma is a fantastic guitarist who got his own ESP model made for a hefty price. It's vaguely strat-like but quite an amazing guitar. He has extensive experience in BeaU as well as some non-visual bands.

The rehearsal went well, and it finally got me comfortable with the songs to the point that I was no longer worried about screwing up too badly or forgetting where the songs went. The songs were standard old punk fare, but sometimes the songs did some interesting things that were a bit uncharacteristic.

Kayuki, vocalist of Homura, was borrowing their guitarist Mitsuru's red Gibson SG and effects pedals. Kayuki is more of an acoustic guitarist so he was quite nervous, but I think he did a good job. Mitsuru also manned our merch table for us. He's a very small shy dude so even I took part in playfully teasing him. :3

It was also the first time in a long while that I've played with a live drummer, and I can think of few other drummers I'd rather play with than Yuichi. He keeps time very well and doesn't rush, and I like the way he mixes things up. He makes playing bass very fun and easy to play around with. Yuichi is G.O.Z VII's drummer, and he also does support for all the other Narciss-label bands with drummer problems.

After the rehearsal, Hidetora still had to work in the office that evening, so he turned us loose and just said to be back in the dressing room by 5 for hair and makeup, as well as photos. I was thinking of going home and taking a rest, but the other four of us ended up going out to lunch and then shopping at the Parco that was recently built on the other side of the station. Kuma in particular is very keen on clothes shopping, and Kayuki, Yuichi and I were glad to come along. Kayuki is a huge Gundam and Kamen Rider nut and excitedly questioned if I liked any of that. I had to admit that I wasn't terribly familiar with Gundam, which he seemed saddened by, but I said I do remember Kamen Rider being broadcast a bit when I was little. He seemed glad about that. It was pretty adorable. Hidetora and I talked about Voltron and Transformers a bit too, because that's more his generation.

At the music store in Parco, I sat down at a piano and played a little bit, and they other guys whipped out their phones and snapped pictures. Kuma put a pic of me playing up on his blog.

We did hair and makeup with the staff (well, Kuma and Hidetora did; Kayuki, Yuichi, and I all did our own) and then took polaroids. We signed them and then shuffled them all together.

At the merch table, which our hair/makeup staff and Mitsuru were in charge of, there were mirrors, towels, and a small handful of t-shirts with the T(S)W logo on them, as well as current CDs from AibeLL, Homura, and a few leftovers from G.O.Z VII. Finally, for 500yen, you could pick one of the polaroids, but which one was decided vaguely lotto-like.

And then it was time for the live. And then the nerves struck. But all that quickly melted away as we took the stage. Now, Hidetora, Kuma, Kayuki, and Yuichi are all signed to Narciss's label and work for their offices, so they're fairly well-known. I was the nobody. So people were surprised when I came out. I stepped up onto the block, threw my arm up and struck a rockin' pose, and the crowd response was really loud. I heard a loud chorus of shocked "Kakkoii!" and wondered if they weren't talking about someone else, but Yuichi was already at the kit and Kayuki hadn't come out yet.

Hidetora's on-stage banter is top-shelf stuff. All his jokes revolved around the idea that were were coming to the tail end of a ridiculous world tour; when Kuma was out of tune at the beginning of the song and asked to start over while he fixed it, Hidetora said, "I expected it from Kayuki, but not from you! Last night in Moscow it was Kayuki out of tune all night!", "Tomorrow night is the last show of our career, at Tokyo Dome", and "We picked up Jimi a few days ago at CBGB in New York". He was able to create this crazy Tora Sky Walkers mythos in the 30 seconds between each song.

He also took the time to let the audience know what bands each member came from and what was coming up for them; he told them that Laverite was on hiatus for now but that in the mean time they could catch me in various music videos. Which also got a huge response. And then he said Tommy February instead of Heavenly. :3

Before our set people had bought the towels and were waving them around for most of our performance; it felt like a Japanese reggae show. Another thing that I noticed was that with 5 people on a stage, things get cramped! Ryota was awesome and came to see us and came back to the dressing room afterward and said, "you didn't move around as much as usual." WHAT D:
If I moved to the right, I'd hit Kayuki; if I moved to my left, Hidetora was guaranteed to come body-check me out of sheer exuberance; if I stepped backward, I'd be accompanying Yuichi on drums with a Cobain-like crash. My options were limited, although I did have a couple of well-timed jumps with Kuma.

After our last song, the call for an encore came IMMEDIATELY; unfortunately we'd exhausted our repertoire. In a last-minute decision, we played the first song again, this time with "Urawa Narciss" in place of "Hibari Hills" in the chorus. (They rhyme in Japanese. I promise.)

The energy was just right, the members felt good, and the crowd was just so wonderful, with quite a lot of them calling my name by the end. :D It's a very strange feeling since I'm so used to, and comfortable with, sort of hanging out on the fringe or background.

At the merch table, they were selling the pictures we'd taken, and Mitsuru told me that many were aiming to draw mine. Several girls who got mine approached and asked if I would sign them. Despite my pointing out that they were already signed, they wanted me to sign the back as well. O_o Lovely girls, every one. Just such positive energy.

The other 4 guys are part of the Narciss label so they were guaranteed a tiny percentage, but that night they treated me as if I was as well and let me in on the cut. We easily oversold the base amount of tickets, and that, combined with the merchandise sales, gave me quite a bit of take-home money. So basically I decided I should keep doing high-profile sessions!

I was lightly mobbed as I tried to leave that night; I had made many new fans and they were all interested in trying to talk to me. A small handful attempted some English, which was sweet. I left like an hour and a half later than I had intended, though!

Basically these dudes are the best and I'm so glad I got to pump out some jams with them. They all were eager to tell me that if they ever need a bassist for anything, they'll give me a shout. This is what playing in a band should feel like, and now I think I have a better bead on what I'm looking for.

Live Report 8/24/08, Urawa Narciss: LAVERITE, Ray, D'LORE, VesuVio, Homura,

We were sixth out of seven bands, and therefore I was up in the dressing room for most of the show and couldn't see most of the bands and can't remember which other ones played that I'm not remembering, but whatever.

With all the free time you have up in the dressing room, you start to go a little crazy. I always have a book or my DS handy, Yue sleeps, and Ryota and I practice guitar. We also doodled a lot in my sketchbook.

Like, seriously, our rehearsal ended at like 2:30 and we didn't go on until 7:30, so we had a lot of time to kill.

So finally it's time to go on, and there are so, so few people that come to see us specifically, and it's getting harder and harder to keep our chins up in the face of that, because it just means we have to pay more at the end of the night. But we made a promise to each other recently: no matter what happens, we will have fun, because we've practiced enough to be secure in our playing. Even in the face of mistakes or missed notes, we must enjoy ourselves, so much so that it sucks people in like a tractor beam, even from all the way to the back of the hall.Yeah, it's a bummer to have a tiny fanbase, but you give your all because no one will come to you until you've reached that balance of good playing ability, attractive stage personality, and using your music as a communication tool.
Ultimately, I have to please myself first.

Yue was particularly good that night, and I just focused on enjoying playing my parts, smiling like I know a secret, and trying to make eye contact with everyone in the room.

Everyone was sitting down, except two guys were enjoying us and standing on my side. Gradually, the songs seemed to reach many of the girls, and, sitting down, they did the little hand motions. Honestly? That's enough for me. For now.

But the guys started looking behind them, beckoning some of the girls to come forward. Finally, midway through our set, about ten girls rushed toward the front, enjoying each other, enjoying the silly guys, enjoying us play, sakuing and giving us little heart signs, applauding our ballad, and getting really pumped up as I laid down the funky groove on "Sexy Dance", and did the neat little side-step thing we do in the verses of "Solidarity" along with us.

We got off the stage and couldn't say anything. "What the hell was that?" I finally said. Yue grinned. "I don't know, but it was definitely cool." We turned to Ryota, who always starts off with the bad parts of the performance before saying anything good. "That was kind of the best," he said.

Taking care of money at the end of the night, even the staff was surprised. "Did you know any of those people?" they asked. We didn't. All of them were new. Which meant that they wouldn't count toward our ticket total for the night, but I'd rather have had a great show and have to pay a bunch of money than to play a poopy show and have to pay a bunch of money. Still, a couple of them bought picture sets, a few said they'd be back the next week for the free live, and some even wrote sweet fanmail to us.

One thing I noticed is that Ryota's tell-tale pre-show nervousness is dissipating. He jokes that it's because he was so nervous meeting Kamijo that now playing a show is merely small potatoes.

I'm really, really looking forward to Sunday's show.

"Rosemary" is all "sold out", and 300 copies of the re-pressing of "Sephirot" are in and around the Tokyo area: Closet Child (Shinjuku, Ikebukuro, Harajuku, and even Yokohama), Like an Edison, Club Indies, and Third Stage. It's absolutely free, so go pick up a copy.

Tomorrow is the Exist Trace 'revival' live. D: